If you cross red with yellow will you get orange? Can you produce the snakeskin tail pattern when you combine tiger and grass in an out cross? Nope, not necessarily, maybe, some of the time and possibly on occasion. Everything will depend upon what set of genetic probabilities Mother AZ assigns to the F1 generation when you throw a pair of guppies into the breeding tank. Every F1 generation is unique. This is true even if we use the same pair as the parents of multiple F1 generations using TransWarp. Mother AZ plays by it's own set of rules and logic. And, just when you think you have a feel for the rules of engagement, Mother AZ can introduce a new component to the puzzle just to keep you on your toes. Now, with all that said let's mix yellow and red and combine tiger with snakeskin and see what Mother AZ can produce. I have chosen to out-cross our strain of "albino tux snakeskin Christmas red" with our strain of "mosaic tiger canary". I have no preconceived notions as to what phenotypes this out cross will produce. I do want to preserve the tuxedo body pattern so the female will be taken from the albino strain. Here are the males of the two strains we will be out-crossing:

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I could write several paragraphs with a number of speculations about what we might expect from this out-cross, but why bother. Let's throw a pair into the tank and see what we get. Here are the males in the F1 generation: Again, I am very relieved to see that all the males look identical. Now remember; just because all these guys have the same phenotype does not in any way suggest that their genotypes are the same. To truly explore this gene pool would mean pairing each male with each female and taking a look at her offspring. Then you could mix and match brothers and sisters from the F2 generations and work with whatever phenotypes catches your eye. This process can take days and is my usual approach. However, we can only work with one pair and one phenotype at a time. I selected a pair from this F1 generation at random to produce one, just one, F2 generation to take a look at. Here are the males produced by this pair. Wow! Not a bad group to explore, wouldn't you say? Take a look at the tiger multi pink guy. Now, who would have thought we would get pink from yellow and red? However, my eye is immediately drawn to the "albino tux tiger" with the topaz tail and red tiger stripes. I want to see what he is hiding in his genes. (Sorry, couldn't resist the pun. You should hear some of the wisecracks and double entendres my wife quips when I deign to try to explain guppy genetics to her.) I pair Mr. Topaz with one of his sisters to produce the F3 generation. Here are the males produced in the F3 generation: We see four phenotypes in this batch of F3 males. We see tux and non-tux body pattern. This is not a real problem as we have learned that we can preserve this trait by using a tuxedo male for the next one or two generations. The gorgeous orange tiger multi tuxedo male in the middle (number 2) will have to be investigated later. Male number four is selected and paired with one of his sisters to produce the F4 generation. My experience leads me to suspect that we have a possible heterozygous situation developing here. The question to be answered is "will the topaz be heterozygous for orange or will the orange be heterozygous for the topaz"? With luck, the topaz can be separated from the orange. Again, a topaz male is selected and paired with one of his sisters to produce the F5 generation. Here are the males produced in the F5 generation. We got lucky. One might think at this point that the topaz is dominant over the orange, but this is not the case. Had we selected the orange as the phenotype to chase we would have discovered that we would always see the topaz as part of a heterozygous strain. (I know, I tried.) Selecting one of these males and one of his sisters we move on to the F6 generation. Here are the males produced in the F6 generation: We have now stabilized a strain of "albino tux tiger topaz pumpkin". (My handy dandy color naming utility says the stripes are pumpkin.) AZ can be very creative with the colors it uses to express the stripes, spots and dots in the tail pattern. This is just one of the reasons I enjoy working with albino strains so much. This out-cross proved to be a very fertile gene pool. I spent several hours exploring the many phenotypes AZ offered from this set of genetic possibilities. Here are the other phenotypes I selected to stabilize from this single gene pool. These are the phenotypes that I found attractive and interesting. There were other phenotypes possible but these are the ones I chose to stabilize. Have we exhausted all the possible phenotypes Mother AZ has up its sleeve waiting for us to discover? Not on your life! Why not go fishing in the gene pool for an albino guppy strain that reveals pastel pectoral fins? Are pastel colored pectoral fins another possible mutation from Mother AZ? Let's go fishing for pastel pecs. GOING FISHING FOR PASTEL PECS